{"id":27312,"date":"2023-07-11T21:26:00","date_gmt":"2023-07-12T04:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=27312"},"modified":"2023-07-11T21:26:00","modified_gmt":"2023-07-12T04:26:00","slug":"poem-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/07\/11\/poem-america\/","title":{"rendered":"POEM: \u201cAMERICA\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By Allen Ginsberg<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

America<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

America I\u2019ve given you all and now I\u2019m nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January
        17, 1956.
I can\u2019t stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go **** yourself with your atom bomb.
I don\u2019t feel good don\u2019t bother me.
I won\u2019t write my poem till I\u2019m in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I\u2019m sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I
        need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not
        the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don\u2019t think he\u2019ll come back
        it\u2019s sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical
        joke?
I\u2019m trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I\u2019m doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven\u2019t read the newspapers for months, everyday
        somebody goes on trial for ******.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid
        I\u2019m not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses
        in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there\u2019s going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I\u2019m perfectly right.
I won\u2019t say the Lord\u2019s Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven\u2019t told you what you did to Uncle
        Max after he came over from Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m addressing you.
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by
        Time Magazine?
I\u2019m obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner
        candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It\u2019s always telling me about responsibility. Business-
        men are serious. Movie producers are serious.
        Everybody\u2019s serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asia is rising against me.
I haven\u2019t got a chinaman\u2019s chance.
I\u2019d better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of
        marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable
        private literature that goes 1400 miles an hour
        and twenty-five-thousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of
        underprivileged who live in my flowerpots
        under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers
        is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that
        I\u2019m a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly
        mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as
        individual as his automobiles more so they\u2019re
        all different sexes.
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500
        down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Com-
        munist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a
        handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
        speeches were free everybody was angelic and
        sentimental about the workers it was all so sin-
        cere you have no idea what a good thing the
        party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand
        old man a real mensch Mother Bloor made me
        cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody
        must have been a spy.
America you don\u2019t really want to go to war.
America it\u2019s them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen.
        And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia\u2019s power
        mad. She wants to take our cars from out our
        garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Readers\u2019
        Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia.
        Him big bureaucracy running our fillingsta-
        tions.
That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read.
        Him need ******* *******. Hah. Her make us
        all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in
        the television set.
America is this correct?
I\u2019d better get right down to the job.
It\u2019s true I don\u2019t want to join the Army or turn lathes
        in precision parts factories, I\u2019m nearsighted and
        psychopathic anyway.
America I\u2019m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                                Berkeley, January 17, 1956<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Allen Ginsberg America America I\u2019ve given you all and now I\u2019m nothing.America two dollars and twentyseven cents January        17, 1956.I can\u2019t stand my own mind.America when will we end the human war?Go **** yourself with your atom bomb.I don\u2019t feel good don\u2019t bother me.I won\u2019t write my poem till I\u2019m in… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[776,775],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27312"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27312"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27313,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27312\/revisions\/27313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}